The last game between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders will be remembered as the game in which KKR medium pacer Vinay Kumar was destroyed by the CSK batsmen in the last over, effectively losing the match for his team.
Poor Vinay Kumar was mocked all over Twitter for that and that mistake has probably caused his reputation permanent damage. We don’t expect him to play another game in the IPL. No captain would now want to take a chance with him.
Moving to tonight’s game – Dinesh Karthik learned a lot from his experience in that game and KKR are now a much improved side. Karthik has been a thinking captain, who stays cool under pressure and never lets ego get in the way. He is also a very good middle order batsman for his team.
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In a lot of ways, Karthik is like MS Dhoni, but without the awesome hitting power. It is tragic that he is of the same generation as Dhoni, otherwise, Karthik would have surely played many years for India. Dhoni, of course, is irreplaceable, easily the greatest cricketer produced by India along with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gawaskar, Kapil Dev, Anil Kumble and Virat Kohli.
So what’s going to happen in tonight’s match? CSK have a fearsome batting unit, but their bowling could be better. They depend heavily on DJ Bravo, and the other bowlers have generally struggled in this IPL.
It is only their batting that has saved them time and time again. It helps that Dhoni is back to his very best – his fearsome best. There is nobody in world cricket who can whack the ball like Dhoni does. His hitting power has been awesome in this IPL and we hope to see more of the same in this game as well.
For KKR, they will want Andre Russell to produce some of his magic with the bat and the ball. Russell has struggled with a hamstring injury throughout the IPL and there is always a worry in the back of Karthik’s mind that his #1 player could break down.
Apart from Russell, the supporting cast of Nitish Rana, Sunil Narine, Chris Lynn and Karthik himself have performed well. Young fast bowler Shivam Mavi has been very impressive and he should play for India soon.
Prediction: Hard game to predict as they are both evenly matched teams. But KKR has to have a slight edge because of home conditions.
The Teams
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Chris Lynn, 2 Sunil Narine, 3 Robin Uthappa, 4 Dinesh Karthik (capt & wk), 5 Nitesh Rana/Ishank Jaggi, 6 Andre Russell, 7 Shubman Gill, 8 Piyush Chawla, 9 Kuldeep Yadav, 10 Shivam Mavi, 11 Tom Curran/Mitchell Johnson
Chennai Super Kings: 1 Shane Watson, 2 Faf du Plessis, 3 Suresh Raina, 4 Ambati Rayudu, 5 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 6 Ravindra Jadeja, 7 Dwayne Bravo, 8 Karn Sharma, 9 Harbhajan Singh, 10 Shardul Thakur, 11 Lungi Ngidi
Watch Kolkata Knight Riders play Chennai Super Kings tonight at 8 pm live on Star Sports!
